Customer Support Gets a Dose of Fun: Achievements Provide Playful Motivational Rewards to Customer Support Agents

A Holiday Gift to Customers

Today we are releasing a new Achievements feature—a holiday gift to all Desk.com customers. We looked at popular social apps like Foursquare that use achievement-based rewards and saw an opportunity to bring a playful—and effective—version to Desk.com Agents.

Achievements is a fun and engaging new feature that recognizes Agents’ service and support achievements by awarding virtual “badges.” The goal is to help Agents work better and smarter, be inspired by the experience of their co-workers, and get up to speed quickly—especially important during the holiday season, when extra part-time Agents and team members are participating in frontline support.

Productivity, Not Speed: A Badge for All Seasons

Our first release offers 16 achievements to earn. Some are easy to earn; others are more challenging. These achievements are productivity incentives, designed to help Agents work better and smarter to deliver superior service and support, rather than attain short-sighted goals like decreasing the time per call, which may lead to customer dissatisfaction.

Productivity incentives encourage proficiency with the Desk.com tools (e.g., resolving customer issues on all channels), going beyond the job requirements (e.g., resolving a customer issue on a weekend), and friendly competition (e.g., becoming the top performing Agent for the week).

How Achievements Work

When an Agent earns an achievement, she unlocks the associated virtual badge—and the bragging rights that go with it. She gets an immediate notification that appears on her screen but does not interrupt her workflow. Each Agent has an individual “My Achievements” Dashboard where she can monitor her progress and view “available” and “earned” achievements. Some are earned once (such as Support Master), which is unlocked when an Agent resolves her 1000th case), and others can be earned weekly (such as Weekly Champion).

How Do Achievements Help Companies Deliver Awesome Customer Service?

Desk.com Achievements are based on the idea of “workplace performance management”—a new way for companies to improve agent performance and boost employee engagement.

Customer service is rigorous and demanding—and can have high turnover. Combining work and play motivates employees to perform even better. Fun, achievement-based activities within the customer support app can provide a sense of accomplishment that helps Agents find their work more rewarding.

Game elements add interest and motivation to repetitive tasks by encouraging friendly competition, thus boosting employee retention. With Desk.com Achievements, frontline support staff can have a richer work experience, gain visibility with supervisors, and garner “bragging rights” with colleagues.

How to Turn On & Use Desk.com Achievements

To enable/disable the Achievements feature for Agents: Go to Admin>Case Management>Agents.

Agents will then have access to “Achievements” from the dropdown menu under their login in the upper right corner of the screen.

Achievements are retroactive. Once the feature is turned on, experienced Agents will begin to see notifications representing the virtual badges they have already earned.

Agent “Quick-Start” Tour and Achievements Work Together

Achievements complement and enhance Desk.com’s “Quick-Start” Tour, a guided in-product tour that helps new Agents gain competency quickly with Desk.com features. Admins setting up a Desk.com support environment get a guided tour that walks them through the first tasks Agents are likely to experience in the Agent Desktop. As new Agents are added to the team, they can choose View Tour from their login dropdown menu to get the tour any time.